Nathan Bissette, an English/American musician and composer, and Kristin Borgehed, Swedish dito, as well as co-founder of FPA, launched their album PurcellPartialsPietist in November 2016.

Performing at the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The duo was founded a few years ago, in Aberdeen, Scotland. The work is based in traditional singing and playing from central parts of Sweden/northeast Scotland, and consists mainly of improvisation and microtonality. String instruments and voices are the main instruments we work with.

This work has a practical side, as is shown on this CD, as well as a theoretical, through Kristin’s PhD studies on microtonality in singing. The repertoire includes a variety of tings, from dance music to church music, from lullabies to wordless humming.

Nathan playing the theorbo.

Participating in the international research conference “Beyond the semitone”.

The album has been very well received, and we look forward to travel around with this music in 2017. Kristin and Nathan would like to say thanks to the board of FPA for this kind contribution!

Here are links to the album, and also to our facebookpage, where all news about concerts etc appear!

Yesterday #koraleriet – A PROJECT ON FEMALE VOICES. ANCIENT PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC LOCAL HYMNS. MONODIC AND POLYPHONIC – met to sing and to record a few songs in Kallinge kyrka. We were only four singers instead of nine, and that invited us to play around with new sounds for a while.

Apart from preparing for our big recording session that will take place in April, we ended up singing songs only from Kristin’s relatives. The fact that these songs are now passed on and spread to singers and listeners very far away from what we refer to as the original setting (even though all similar settings are equally original in the eyes of tradition) made me eager to make a short film of one of the songs, a funeral hymn after my great grandfather Back Erk Daniel Ersson. This to show the very people that have been crucial in keeping this singing style and this particular song alive, and NOT stored in some archive someplace.

When performing traditional music nowadays, it is often the performers that get the appreciation, while the sources remain anonymised. This little video is an attempt to turn this around, to rather show the great mutual confidence and strong personal connections that are the foundation for any strong tradition. From the old wooden cabin in the late 1800s, until today. A quite exotic approach in a capitalist post modern world where we are believed to construct our identity through picking and mixing any impulse we may like along the way, and to earn admiration as if we invented it ourselves.

From men to women, from strictly religious to a (for some of our singers) semi-secular approach, from vertical transmission through six generations in Dalarna, to horisontal transmission among friends and colleagues in Blekinge 2016!

After all, you do share your best songs and advice only with the ones you love!!

Fully aware of that this is a long and important discussion, we just simply want to highlight that a big local newspaper were unsatisfied with the little amount of women on stage on this year’s Hasslöfestivalen. Among their tips for coming years are among others Bessman, a quartet in which both Astrid and Kristin, Lisa Stormlod, and Marie Länne Persson (with excellent blog Slakamusiken https://slakamusiken.wordpress.com) sing. We want to celebrate this as a sigh of society’s increasing awareness of the aesthetic and entertaining potential of traditional music.

More singers on their way? We gathered by the ferry to Hästholmen in the Karlskrona archipelago, for a day of traditional sailor, sailing and water songs. Among them sea shanties, dance tunes, and hymns.

Women of all generations singing loudly out to the Baltic Sea, and the next generation of singers is gradually being secured!!

Passionate singing!

Songs about the symbolism of bare feet dipped in either the sea or in red wine…

The singing session was organised together with the local traditional boats club.